Brynhild
by RandomFlame
Summary: A collection of oneshots set in a fantastical alternate universe. Tsunayoshi, will you ever wake? Warning: Chapter Four is not for the faint of heart. I really wish it hadn't needed to be written.
1. Phantasmagoria

The sky is grey and grey and grey. The air hangs heavy, still. There is no wind to lift the heat, and though it is nearing midmorning, the sun has yet to burn off the clouds. There is a strange air about the house, unease piling up in the corners with the dust and the grime. The house has not been cleaned for two days.

The men folk are out of the house, as they are every day at this time. The dishes from their breakfast are lying on the counter, crusted with the residue of their meals for the past two days. They are tending the fields, reaping their grain; the end of summer waits for no man. Should they leave off their task the crops will go to waste. Falling to drown in dirt, stolen by hungry beasts, rotting on the stalk; the family has just enough food to go around. They cannot afford to lose any of their precious grain.

The house is not empty, filled as it is with dust and hanging air, but the two who remain do not venture from the farthest room. The room is warmer in than out, and the sheets Kyoko lies on are soaked with sweat. In the dim, lit only by a single lamp, she seems savage, animal-like in her strain. Her faced is newly lined and with every grunt, every moan of pain, those lines grow deeper.

Sitting with her, holding her head in his lap and both her hands in his, is Tsuna. He does not wince when she spasms and grips down hard enough to warp iron. His face is drawn and pale, shoulders hunched, and his mouth is just as tight with strain as her grip on his hands. Still, through his iron mouth he is whispering to her. He croons words of encouragement every second, not once stopping for breath.

He loves her.

Kyoko is young, this is her first birth. Her labor has lasted already for two days and three nights. Tsuna has not left her side since it began. She weakens with each contraction.

Looking down at her, he is the very picture of despair.


	2. First Life

It's dark, the first time he opens his eyes. Fine distant light filters in from somewhere overhead, drifting down through the murk. He blinks, once,and sleeps again.

* * *

When next he wakes, it's not bright, exactly, but light enough to sea the great green strands moving lazily with the waves. The kelp forest thrives.

He shifts, to ease tension on his cramped caudal, and watches.

All the world is green, but at the corners of his eye it blurs. Silver fish dart to and fro, shining in the light. An otter snatches an urchin and streaks to the surface, high and away. His purse is anchored to the same rock that holds the kelp.

As he watches, and learns, the song of the waves lulls him back to slumber.

* * *

Days pass, and weeks. He is awake now for hours at a time, fully developed, but his yolk sac isn't yet gone.

Each day is the same as the next. He wakes just before dawn, watches the ocean live and feed and die. Come noon he sleeps.

Nothing in the water has ever paid him any attention in return.


	3. First Meetings

For what seemed the millionth time that day, Dino cursed otters. If the world had no otters, there wouldn't be kelp forests, and if there were no kelp forests-

Well. It would be a different matter untangling himself from a single strand of kelp.

He tugged uselessly at a particularly knotted tangle around the boneleaf protruding from his hip. Just as it had the past three times, the tangle refused to be moved, and Dino remained stuck. It wasn't as though he were trying to makes things harder for Squalo, but Dino knew the shark would take it as a personal offence that he'd managed to get caught again.

For the fourth time in three days.

Dino tugged again, and cursed. Squalo would probably let him sit and rot if he knew. His patience had limits, and those didn't even stretch enough for him to slow down to let Dino catch up, much less wait the hours it would take to dent this mess. And Squalo was the only one on this section of the coastline for miles.

Reborn could have him out in half the time it took for an anemone to close, but the old magician would probably say that Dino deserved it and make the kelp even more stubborn.

Dino gave on last, fruitless pull at the kelp and closed his eyes. He had been born in this form, the clumsy relative of a sea horse, and so felt most comfortable wearing it, but a _nykr_ could change shape at will. Dino concentrated, his fins stilling in deep thought, and slowly his form blurred.

Two legs burst from the join between his stomach and his scales, dun colored fur and pale fetlocks. His tail stretched and twisted, and Dino reveled in its' flexibility. His boneleaves melted away into one long, small fin, running the length of his spine down to the great fan of his caudal fins.

He flexed, kelp slipping smoothly away from limbs no longer there to catch, and launched himself in exactly to opposite direction than he wanted to go.

He muttered to himself as he sought his way back to the edge of the forest, voice a low angry hum. He so seldom took any shape other than his accustomed that he had terrible trouble with coordinating all the new muscles.

After a somewhat daring maneuver around an otter, worthless overgrown rat, Dino finally managed to orient himself in the direction he knew was back toward the deep sea. Three swift strokes of his tail sent him moving at a rate he never reached in his primary form, to smash directly into an egg case.

He cursed, again, and looked up into startled brown eyes. The purse's inmate was hovering just beyond the skin.


	4. Nightmare

Tsunayoshi dreams of eating: swallowing, chewing, stripping flesh from bone, as he would were he free of the case. Tsuna has never eaten before, has survived on the protein in his yolk-sac for the few weeks he's been alive, but something feral in him knows the way.

Tsuna's hungry. His yolk-sac, growing smaller everyday, was used up three days ago, diminished to nothing. The ache in his stomach is fierce, cramping, and his limbs are almost too heavy to shift. His purse hasn't split, the egg case is still as strong as the day his mother wove it, keeping him safe from predators. Keeping him from food: Tsuna is wasting away.

It's a good dream.

Tsuna dreams the taste of raw meat as it slides down his throat, dreams the texture of smooth scales and the slick film that protects bare skin, dreams the contrast between life-warm flesh and the cool water that surrounds him. He dreams of bones, thin and brittle, crushed in his mouth as he sucks out their marrow.

Hollow bones. Distantly Tsuna wonders what he's eating, the thought vague with sleep. Whatever it is seems to be all fins: every bite is skin stretched like gauze over long rayed bone and keratin, no muscle. Not enough meat to fill a clamshell. Maybe a flying fish, it occurs to him, one of those that glide above the water with fins like sails; and he thinks no more on the matter. After all, it's only a dream.

Tsunayoshi swallows, fragments of bone and false bone scratching his throat on the way down. He takes another bite, and another, suddenly desperate for something filling, something more substantial than the meager fare of fin. He bites and bites and gulps and swallows, teeth needle-sharp and ripping, tearing, and finally-

Finally, finally, his jaws close on muscle. A rush of blood fills his senses, Tsuna's face twists with a fierce joy. He wrenches his neck back, a jerk as the flesh comes free and-

Tsunayoshi wakes, shrieking with pain. Blood is in the water, and tiny scraps of skin shift in the wake of his motion. His caudal fins are in ruins, a ragged mess hanging from his skinny arms. Great patches are missing from his right and only strips remain of his left. His arm is laid bare to the bone: a semi-circular gaping wound the size of his fist.

The size of his mouth.


End file.
